Care Work Is the Invisible Engine of the Global Economy — And We Still Refuse to Pay for It

Social Justice

Every day, across the world, billions of hours of work are performed quietly and without recognition. Children are fed, elderly people are cared for, households are maintained, emotional stability is sustained.

This work is essential. It is continuous. It is the foundation upon which all other economic activity depends. And yet, it is largely invisible.

Globally, an estimated 16 billion hours of unpaid care work are performed every single day. The majority of this work is carried out by women. If this labor were assigned a monetary value, it would represent a staggering share of global economic output — trillions of dollars each year. This is not a side issue. It is the hidden infrastructure of the global economy.

Modern economic systems are built on a contradiction. They depend on care work, yet they refuse to recognize it as economic value. We measure productivity, income, and growth with increasing precision, but the very labor that makes all of this possible remains outside the system. At this point, a legitimate question arises. What about those who would appear to lose from such a system?

The consequences are not abstract. They accumulate over entire lifetimes.

Those who take on significant care responsibilities often earn less, save less, and accumulate fewer pension rights. Over time, this leads to financial dependency, reduced security, and a significantly higher risk of poverty in old age. By the time these effects become visible — for example after a divorce or at retirement — the system has already extracted decades of value without compensation. When individuals who have performed years of unpaid care work reach old age without sufficient pension entitlements, the gap does not disappear.

Care work is not simply unpaid. It is systematically excluded from economic recognition.

It is often framed as a private matter — a personal or family choice. But this framing does not hold up under closer scrutiny. No economy can function without care. No workforce exists without someone raising, supporting, and maintaining it. Care work is not external to the economy. It is a precondition of it. This raises concerns about fairness and potential imbalances.

For decades, institutions and researchers have pointed out this imbalance. They have called for better childcare systems, more flexible work arrangements, and greater social recognition. These are important steps, but they do not address the core issue.

The missing link is not awareness. It is measurement.

As long as care work is not translated into economic value, it will remain structurally undervalued.

There is, however, a remarkably simple way to address this.

Imagine a system in which every hour of care work is recorded and translated into economic rights — for example, pension credits. If care work is translated into pension value, then part of that value must come from somewhere.

The principle is straightforward: the time a person spends on unpaid care is valued proportionally in relation to the income of the primary earner within the same economic unit. If someone works only part-time but spends an additional 30 hours per week on childcare, household work, or caregiving, those hours are no longer treated as economically irrelevant. Instead, they generate measurable value that is reflected in long-term financial security. Only the actual care work performed is counted. If part of this work is outsourced — for instance through paid childcare or domestic help — the system adjusts automatically.

Such a model would be gender-neutral. It would not depend on traditional roles or assumptions. It would simply reflect reality. Technically, this is not complicated. The necessary data already exists in most tax and social security systems: income, working hours, household structures. What is missing is not the infrastructure, but the decision to apply it differently.

A system that accounts for care work early in a person's life would not create entirely new burdens. It would redistribute existing ones more transparently and more fairly over time.

There are also potential benefits for the society, including primary earners, that are often overlooked. If fewer people fall into poverty in old age, the pressure on public systems decreases. Lower welfare costs can translate into lower tax burdens over time. Greater financial independence within households can reduce conflict and increase stability.

Seen from this perspective, the issue is not one of loss, but of timing and structure.

Of course, any such system would need careful design. Safeguards could be introduced to prevent disproportionate burdens. Thresholds, caps, and shared responsibility models could ensure flexibility and fairness. Integration with existing tax systems could allow for balancing mechanisms.

None of these are insurmountable challenges.

What matters is the underlying principle: that economic systems should reflect real contributions, not just those that happen to be monetized. We are no longer lacking data. We are no longer lacking tools. What we are lacking is a collective willingness to rethink how value is defined.

This leads to a set of questions that are difficult to avoid.

Why is unpaid care work still excluded from pension systems in most countries? Why do we measure economic output with precision, but ignore the labor that makes it possible? Why are decades of essential work allowed to translate into financial insecurity later in life?

And perhaps most importantly: What kind of system do we actually want to live in?

One that extracts value without recognizing it? Or one that aligns economic structures with reality?

Care work is not secondary to the economy. It is what makes the economy possible. Until this is reflected in the way we measure and distribute value, our systems will remain fundamentally incomplete.

Invitation to Contribute

This article is intended as a starting point, not a finished solution.

If you have thoughts, critiques, alternative ideas, or practical considerations, you are warmly invited to share them in the comments on this blog.

Which aspects of such a system seem realistic to you? Where do you see challenges or unintended consequences? How could it be improved or adapted across different countries and cultural contexts?

Based on the level of interest and the quality of discussion, there may be in the future an opportunity to further develop and test ideas like this within the upcoming Eticania Creative Campus — a participatory space for collaboratively designing and refining future societal systems (still under construction).

References

World Economic Forum. (2023). Workforce gender gap and unpaid care work. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/04/workforce-gender-gap-crisis/

World Economic Forum. (2024). The future of the care economy. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/caring-care-economy-key-growth-and-well-being/

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2025). Invisible yet indispensable: Why the world runs on women’s unpaid care work. Retrieved from https://social.desa.un.org/world-summit-2025/blog/invisible-yet-indispensable-why-the-world-runs-on-womens-unpaid-care-work

International Labour Organization. (2024). Unpaid care work prevents women’s participation in the labour market. Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/unpaid-care-work-prevents-708-million-women-participating-labour-market

OECD. (2025). Gender equality in a changing world: Persistent gaps in paid and unpaid work. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/gender-equality-in-a-changing-world_e808086f-en/full-report/persistent-gender-gaps-in-paid-and-unpaid-work_cb137837.html